The updated draw for the Roewe Shanghai Masters, with seven of the eight wild cards included, is now available.

Tian Pengfei, who won the recent BTV International, plays Jamie Burnett first, with the winner to face defending champion Ronnie O'Sullivan, who Tian beat in the first round of the Sanyuan Foods China Open in March.

Time to get rid of the wildcards in the Chinese events now. Completely unfair on players who may have had to have won 3 or 4 matches to get there and have a chance to play against one of the big boys only to lose to a wildcard.

Alex0paul WC wrote:Time to get rid of the wildcards in the Chinese events now. Completely unfair on players who may have had to have won 3 or 4 matches to get there and have a chance to play against one of the big boys only to lose to a wildcard.

Alex0paul WC wrote:Time to get rid of the wildcards in the Chinese events now. Completely unfair on players who may have had to have won 3 or 4 matches to get there and have a chance to play against one of the big boys only to lose to a wildcard.

i Agree the wild card in china especially has past it sell by date.

ding,wenbo are now there on merit and the players behind could easily make a venue Xiao Guodong,Tian Pengfei has proved how good they are although Tian not on tour at the moment he wont be long until hes back.

My only problem is there are two many wildcards. Other individual sports like Golf and Tennis use wildcards to effect.

Also its kind of a double edged sword for the pro players drawn against them, if they win they have received good match practise on the tables and should be sharp, on the flipside they could be beaten.

TIME TO DITCH THE WILDCARDSThe forthcoming Roewe Shanghai Masters will be the tenth world ranking event staged in China in the last five years.

The first of these was the 2005 China Open in Beijing, won by Ding Junhui and the start of the boom that has created snooker fans of millions.

But these millions, like anywhere else in the world, want to watch the top stars. The days when wildcards were needed to prop up interest are over.

This is why the current system of local wildcards for Chinese events should end.

Years ago, an invited player from the host country had little chance of success. Now, the Chinese players, on home soil and without the pressure of ranking points, have every chance of beating the qualifiers, who are on a hiding to nothing – literally, as they get no money for playing an extra match. In the dim and distant past they received £500.

This is supposed to be a new era, a meritocracy.

If that is the case then it is grossly unfair on those who have come through the qualifiers to have to play talented wildcards, some of whom were on the circuit last season, instead of going straight through to the top 32, a place they have earned fairly.

But there is another issue. Any sporting event should hit the ground running with its biggest names.

It tells those watching on TV that this is a proper event and worth following for the week.

According to the format, the first TV match on day one will be Jamie Burnett v Tian Pengfei and the second will be Dave Harold v Yu Delu. The other matches in this round are not any more appetising with the possible exception of Ken Doherty, a big name, who, farcically, will play the only non-Chinese wildcard and is therefore certain not to be on TV.

And the knock on effect is that the last 32 has to be played over two days not three and so TV viewers will not see some of the game’s best known faces early on.

On the second evening, Ronnie O’Sullivan plays Burnett or Tian on the first TV table. Marco Fu, as he is from Hong Kong, will play Mark Davis on the second.

This means that Mark Williams v Ricky Walden – arguably the tie of the round – will be out of range of the cameras.

Neil Robertson, Shaun Murphy and Stephen Hendry are all on the same session so, again, one of these will be put round the back.

Long time readers may remember the utter farce of John Higgins and Mark Selby, playing for the first time since their world final three years ago, being put on table 3.

There is actually a simple solution to this, one myself and colleagues have suggested before: play two wildcard matches on the second day and put two last 32 games on the first day. This way you would start with big names and they wouldn’t then find themselves out on table three.

Needless to say, such suggestions have been ignored.

Wildcards are a good way of growing an event but Chinese tournaments have grown sufficiently and there’s no need for them now.

Their effect is a glacially slow start to the event, big names not exposed to TV coverage and an understandable sense of grudging resentment among a number of the players.

It’s time for them to go.

I agree. And it's all the more "unfair" that those local boys will not be jet-lagged and have probably been practicing under the tournament conditions days before it starts. National pride is quite something in China.

Sure, the wildcard round is unfair to the players that have gone through the qualification and all. There's no arguments there. But that's only a half truth.

The tour is and has always been unfair on the over-seas players. You need to be a britt to excel on the tour, and this is the way things have been. From the early stage as how new players gets his or her tour membership to the qualifications always being held always in England, over-seas players has an tremendous hill to climb to become successfull snooker players. Therefore, and not by merit I say, you have a tour that consists of almost 85% players from either UK or Ireland. I've checked those numbers. I think Igor Figueiredo is a brilljant example of a player nobody ever heard of, coming from a country not at all associated with snooker, coming over having received a... drum roll... wild card, that's right... and playing well and everybodys suddenly surprised and excited.

So the wild-card round isn't the first and major injustice I would correct if I was Barry Hearn. So in order to make Snooker a global sport you'd need global events, that includes qualifiers, and you'd need a globaly more just spread as to how new players would be promoted on to the tour. Make all wild cards redundant.

we do need qualifiers played in the country the tournament is held in but the logistics of moving all 96 players that consists of 72 out of the 96 players that is living in scotland,england or wales is a problem.

wildJONESEYE wrote:we do need qualifiers played in the country the tournament is held in but the logistics of moving all 96 players that consists of 72 out of the 96 players that is living in scotland,england or wales is a problem.

It is a massive problem but if we want this to be a global sport then maybe the qualifiers should be held in China. They have to come here to qualify for the World Open, UK, Masters and Worlds and now 6 PTC's. So it is only fair that UK players should go to there country to qualify for those events. Fair is fair and if the UK players felt hard done by by this then they should remember they have got the majority events over here.

wildJONESEYE wrote:we do need qualifiers played in the country the tournament is held in but the logistics of moving all 96 players that consists of 72 out of the 96 players that is living in scotland,england or wales is a problem.

It is a massive problem but if we want this to be a global sport then maybe the qualifiers should be held in China. They have to come here to qualify for the World Open, UK, Masters and Worlds and now 6 PTC's. So it is only fair that UK players should go to there country to qualify for those events. Fair is fair and if the UK players felt hard done by by this then they should remember they have got the majority events over here.

totally agree the same principal as the PTC.

all pro players that enters has to go to Germany for the Paul Hunter Classic why not go to china do some promotional gigs and play qualifiers at the same time.

Well I think the PTC:s are the way to go in the future. In the early stages when the idea of the PTC:s where introduced, I sorta got the idea it was meant to be 4 in the UK, 4 in Europe and 4 perhaps in Asia. I'm not 100% on if this was how it was presented, but it's how I remember hearing of it. Somehow those 4 World PTC:s suddenly disappeared. Perhaps a money question? In the not too distant future I would hope we get those 4 world PTC:s so over-seas players gets more playing opportunities and qualifying opportunities.

vinot wrote:Well I think the PTC:s are the way to go in the future. In the early stages when the idea of the PTC:s where introduced, I sorta got the idea it was meant to be 4 in the UK, 4 in Europe and 4 perhaps in Asia. I'm not 100% on if this was how it was presented, but it's how I remember hearing of it. Somehow those 4 World PTC:s suddenly disappeared. Perhaps a money question? In the not too distant future I would hope we get those 4 world PTC:s so over-seas players gets more playing opportunities and qualifying opportunities.

the 4 World PTC disappeared with Pat Mooney.

he was heavily involved with organizing the PTC Abroad. or that what the plan was

vinot wrote:Well I think the PTC:s are the way to go in the future. In the early stages when the idea of the PTC:s where introduced, I sorta got the idea it was meant to be 4 in the UK, 4 in Europe and 4 perhaps in Asia. I'm not 100% on if this was how it was presented, but it's how I remember hearing of it. Somehow those 4 World PTC:s suddenly disappeared. Perhaps a money question? In the not too distant future I would hope we get those 4 world PTC:s so over-seas players gets more playing opportunities and qualifying opportunities.

Yeah I don’t see why they can’t create 3 or 4 APTC’s and organize them when the players are over there for the Shanghai, China Open and Wuxi. Its perfect because the events are only 3 days and could be fit in and it would be brilliant for the Chinese pro’s and armatures. As for the qualifiers being played in the country of the event I think this is the way forward but having more thought on it, it may not be feasible at the moment because of cost. It is more cost effective to have the qualifiers held in Sheffield for time being but in the future it would be great to see.

vinot wrote:Well I think the PTC:s are the way to go in the future. In the early stages when the idea of the PTC:s where introduced, I sorta got the idea it was meant to be 4 in the UK, 4 in Europe and 4 perhaps in Asia. I'm not 100% on if this was how it was presented, but it's how I remember hearing of it. Somehow those 4 World PTC:s suddenly disappeared. Perhaps a money question? In the not too distant future I would hope we get those 4 world PTC:s so over-seas players gets more playing opportunities and qualifying opportunities.

the 4 World PTC disappeared with Pat Mooney.

he was heavily involved with organizing the PTC Abroad. or that what the plan was

vinot wrote:Well I think the PTC:s are the way to go in the future. In the early stages when the idea of the PTC:s where introduced, I sorta got the idea it was meant to be 4 in the UK, 4 in Europe and 4 perhaps in Asia. I'm not 100% on if this was how it was presented, but it's how I remember hearing of it. Somehow those 4 World PTC:s suddenly disappeared. Perhaps a money question? In the not too distant future I would hope we get those 4 world PTC:s so over-seas players gets more playing opportunities and qualifying opportunities.

the 4 World PTC disappeared with Pat Mooney.

he was heavily involved with organizing the PTC Abroad. or that what the plan was